


What the living do

by magpie4shinies



Category: Ladyhawke (1985)
Genre: F/M, Gen, not triggering I don't think, pre-film story, this is sad is what I'm saying, with all of the atmosphere that might go into isabeau's line that I quote in the summary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie4shinies/pseuds/magpie4shinies
Summary: Are you flesh, or are you spirit? 

  I am sorrow.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faithfulcynic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithfulcynic/gifts).



The air is unpleasantly warm and damp even now, when the only light visible through the thick tangle of branches high overhead is pale and watery, from the tired waning moon. It just barely provides light to see the trees, dim obstructions that they are. The ground is uneven and treacherous, shadows in deeper shade and Isabeau dares not risk turning her ankle when safe harbor to heal is so uncertain. 

It has been five days since she last slept in a bed, and two since the last freeman who had offered her use of a barn. It hasn’t rained since, but the scent of it is strong and she hopes Etienne brings them close to a place to rest safely tomorrow. 

Etienne took her on a clandestine trip to a lake, once, to eat lunch and spend a few hours together in the grass while Imperius lingered within earshot. He had taught her to skip stones that day, his characteristically somber countenance ruined with the quiet happiness that seemed to suffuse him whenever he recognized her presence nearby. 

Etienne’s callused fingers had been gentle when he’d corrected the angle of her hand and wrist and she recalled the heat that had suffused her, then, and how she had tried to convince herself that it had been embarassment to be touched rather than longing to be touched more. She had still been uncertain then, finding her footing in a world that had dripped poison into her ear about who and what she was allowed to be until she had met Etienne, who had asked her what she wanted to be. 

This is another Isabeau than the one who inhabits sometimes flesh and sometimes feather. That Isabeau, the one from before, thinks she understands the darkness in men’s hearts and distracts herself from the gentle look in Etienne’s eyes with a palm full of smooth flat stones. That Isabeau stands in the sun with grass seed in her hair while Imperius gives witness to Goliath and pretends that he does not know they are falling in love. 

Now, Isabeau is alone but for Goliath. Etienne is nearby - he must be - but she can only guess at his absence. When she was returned to herself, she could almost see the face of her lover imposed upon the wolf he became every night, the lines of his familiar form lingering in her eyes like sunspots from too long staring. His ghost stood at the very edge of the camp he had made them, the farthest spoke from Goliath and Isabeau, and as Isabeau returned to herself with an ache swelling in her chest that asked _please_ but expected _no_ , his figure faded into the shadows and the wolf had departed. 

It is no longer strange to her. Sometimes he hunts, filling his belly before bringing her back something to cook, but that’s rare. He’s too impatient, too frightened, even as a wolf with none of the sharp intelligence and understanding that had brought him to prominence as Captain of the Guard in Aquila. Rather than hunt he paces, always on guard against danger his mind isn’t capable of understanding when he’s a beast. 

No, he never leaves her alone for long, always fearful of the dangers she is now accustomed to facing. They aren’t safe anywhere. The Bishop has deep pockets, a honeyed tongue, and wicked friends. 

Where can they go, that he does not eventually find them? Two weeks ago she had risked a trip to a small settlement during the earliest hour before dawn, when it is only slightly odd that she approaches rather than remarkable, to beg a little salt in trade for a crude pelt she’d partially salvaged from one of Etienne’s kills. She had overheard a trapper apparently returning from a hunt grumbling about eccentric holy men wanting the pelt of a black wolf killed by moonlight. 

The trip back to their little camp is still a hole in her memory unlike anything else, even her memory of instinct, fear, and flight. She’d returned to herself to the bite of bark on her white knuckled fingers as she had left a warning scratched into the dirt for Etienne at the camp. She doesn’t know if he’d read it. She hasn’t returned to another town since. 

Etienne has a goal, always guiding them with purpose. Isabeau admires his hope even while part of her rages over it. Without him, she thinks, the suffocating darkness welling in her would have overwhelmed her grief. 

There is no longer any kindness in the eyes of strangers for Isabeau. If not for the light of Etienne in her eyes at the edge of dawn or the fall of dusk, Isabeau would have surrendered her soul to God to be judged in the kingdom immortal. She has tried to hate him, to blame him, to rage at him. It is easiest when he is a wolf, with none of the qualities of the man she had loved…

But that is a lie. Even in his eyes as the wolf, she recognizes the same deep sadness in her own heart. But always, too, there is determination also. Hope. _Love_. Over the winter, the first spent in the world away from comfort and family, she had woken at the tail end of evenings she could never have survived alone to a cloak covered in black fur too long to be Goliath’s and still warm to the touch. Etienne is still Etienne, and Isabeau is resigned to the knowledge that she will not be freed from this almost-existence while he yet lives, while he still has hope. Her heart is tethered to his. 

Goliath is a mundane comfort. She remembers a time when she was frightened of his size and temperament. Now, he is sometimes more calming to her than Etienne circling, ever circling, rarely coming in close as his nature wars with him. 

Isabeau wonders, sometimes, what he recalls. The hawk is sanctuary for her now, as the first year of their exile finishes and no resolution to Etienne’s hope resolves itself from the aether. She has prayed and wept and raged until all of the edges of her grief have worn as smooth as the stones she once threw into a lake while the sun laid in spots to remember it along the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. She has no more fuel for the anger, her grief has flowed and overflowed and now ebbed to a constant hollow reminder of warm fingers that wanted nothing but her hand. 

Her hope is smaller now, but a constant aggravation. It is all for Etienne. She has cast aside all belief that the Bishop will lift his curse, if he could, or that Etienne’s miracle will be found, and lives every day in the hope that once, just once more, she will someday see her love as the man he is stand in the light. 

As though the world is half listening, the wolf that bears Isabeau’s soul in its chest appears from the deep shadows at the north edge of the clearing and stops, staring at her. 

_I still love you_ , she thinks, while her heart aches for him as he slowly creeps closer until he finally settles on the ground, just out of reach; a familiar pool of black amidst the unknown and the cruel. _And I always will._

Part of her wonders if this is the true curse while the rest of her knows it to be true.

**Author's Note:**

> The original request was from faithfulcynic for a story about Isabeau and Etienne after they're cursed but before Mouse helps free them. This is a departure from my usual style, but I hope it communicated the atmosphere I wanted.


End file.
